


Head Like A Hole

by Nerve_Itch



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Gore, M/M, Other, Trauma, enthusiastic Cronenberg references, injury misuse, terrible things happening to Will Graham, things going into wounds that shouldn't, woundfucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 21:35:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20824160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerve_Itch/pseuds/Nerve_Itch
Summary: A version of events that somehow makes things even worse for Will.Written for the Hannibal Gorefest 2019





	Head Like A Hole

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This is every bit as appalling as the tags suggest.

Will exists on the pivot between feeling too much – feeling things too bright, too sharp – and not being present at all. His absences from himself are well practiced. They started, in those cold childhood years, as a blank-walled room, with a door that locked. They grew with his trauma; became gardens, and then streams. These days, his escapes are into the vast and hungry ocean; he’s swallowed by it so readily that he can barely exist at all. Just…bobs, and sometimes sinks, and disappears.

The illusion is not sustainable. Eventually, the great body of water will spit him back out and he’ll be alive again. This is one of those times; the swell of the waves buffets him, and the water turns red.

He’s back. Alive and present, and still choking down red water. The air is raw with spilling blood and Will’s reaching for his face because something is very wrong. His fingers slip around metal – a handle, but sharper than that – and tug. His teeth scrape against steel, cracks and splinters mixing with blood and _he does not want to be here for this_.

Someone called him back, and only one person has ever had a hold on him so strong that he could dry up an ocean just to summon him. _Hannibal_.

Will spits shards onto the ground beneath him, glittering against the glass and concrete. He can’t _see_ Hannibal, not beyond the precipice ahead of him. There’s someone else with them; someone more urgent and somehow more lethal.

Francis. The dragon.

The ocean roils beneath the cliff, a temptation that could quiet the screeches of pain left in the knife's wake. It’s what Will had planned for, if only figuratively. Except, Hannibal needs him. And despite his many judgements, better or otherwise, Will finds that he needs to be here for him.

The dragon is at Will’s back, and the knife is in Will’s hand. He lunges; feels the resistance of the blade crunching through the gristle of muscles, and Will allows himself the joy of hearing the dragon roaring in pain. This – this gleeful tool of retribution - is who he wanted to drown. He knows, he thinks, that it is too late. 

Hannibal calls his name aloud, and Will sees him now; sprawled behind the smashed glass and holding himself together through a bullet hole in his gut. Will feels it; the frustration of being rendered helpless. A familiarity, reversed. He'll fight the dragon for the both of them.

Will’s fingers slide against the knife, feels it slipping out of reach. It’s no matter; he’s buoyed by a fury that could rend flesh from bones with sheer strength of willpower. Pain has gifted him adrenaline in surges and spikes, and in this moment he has become invincible. His fists meet leather, meet the sturdy skin of the dragon’s face, and each gasp of pain from Francis only makes him stronger. He feels Hannibal’s pride around him like a shield. He’s absolutely alive.

Will’s strength builds; pulls blood and screams, then crashes wave-like at the first puncture in his shoulder. The motion falls out of his swinging fist and he’s floored; a weak tide lapping at the concrete.

Hannibal calls him again, and this time he sounds like a warning.

Will is lifted, then. Feels his shoulders tearing, his back scraping against the glass beneath him, and he’s fighting this, still, not going under, even when the small of his back rests against the emptied windowpane and his lungs crush under the weight of solid thighs. He’s staring up at the dragon’s bloodied teeth, an oblique glimpse of Hannibal crawling towards him and for the first time tonight he feels fear. Hot, ugly shaking terror, because the wretched knife – the one he imagined he could fight without – is angled above his leaking cheek. This time, the knife doesn’t jab, or slide. It burrows. Twists.

This, Will feels too clearly. His face feels cleaved and the back of his throat is raw with shards of teeth and blood and screaming.

“Do you know what happens next?” asks the dragon.

Will knows. He knows in the way that the dragon’s breathing is heavier, closer, and he knows in the way that the ceiling is blocked out by the oil-black leather of the dragon’s clothes loosening above him, and in the splot, splot of blood dripping onto his neck from those few good hits he’d thought would save him.

Will can’t see Hannibal, can’t hear him through his own roaring protest, and so, he disappears.

The water laps at him, black and vast and cool. He’s held afloat. For a blissful moment, he’s safe. The water grows texture, thickens like jelly. It rises to his jaw. Pulls at the skin there, until his teeth – his broken teeth – grow cold as the water hits his gums. The water rises; fills him, slithers against him and through him and this is not the motionless submersion he can disappear into; he’s choking on the saltwater and his skin is splitting wider to let it in.

“Will.”

This time, he doesn’t resent being called back. Will knows, before he returns to his too many senses, that something violently and invasively wrong is happening to him. He’s still choking, still pinned. There’s a steady friction against his nostrils; leathery, wiry sweat clogging. This means something, this shuttered breathing, the swelling inside his mouth, clogging his throat. It means something terrible, and Will can’t push it away from him. His arms are twisted and pinned and half crushed and his head can’t back any further into the floor to escape this. If he can spit this out – and now he knows which part of Francis is buried inside his mouth, his throat, pulsing and twitching, but he won’t name it – if he can spit it out, he’ll be okay.

His lips are numb and perhaps this is merciful; but he knows the motion. Will presses, and pushes, but his lips only press against each other, and then air.

The horror sinks into him, fills his throat and leaks into the split seam of his cheek. In the same moment he understands that it’s the wound in his face that’s being stretched – _fucked_ – Francis slithers out, softened.

The rage that floods Will’s veins is something unparalleled to anything he’s felt before. It doesn’t replace the absolutely vulnerability that threatened to swallow him whole, but swirls until Will believes himself a vortex. The dragon is pulled from him and only now does Will see Hannibal in full focus; eyes lit up with spite, and teeth poised at veins. Will grants himself a single second, to spit, and then he’s on the dragon’s back, tearing through skin. A knife passes between hands; between his and Hannibal’s and back again, until the dragon is no longer whole. The shreds of him fall hot and still between them, and Will takes a breath that tastes like his own. The next breath he takes, tastes like Hannibal; the whispers of mutual understanding close enough to inhale.

He could still disappear, again. The ocean glittering black, within reach. Except, he’s holding Hannibal up, and he’s being held in turn, in the parts of him not strong enough, and he feels – too many things to give words or tangibility to – but he’s here, and he’s vividly, painfully and furiously alive.


End file.
